Cybersecurity. Our thoughts for your Protection
We hope that you have managed to ride-out the past few months of COVID related restrictions that has affected a number of businesses across NSW & Victoria in particular. We understand there has been a substantial demand for Accountants to assist clients with government grants due to cashflow issues over the past few months so you can understand just how busy we have been.
We trust that you read last month’s newsletter & taken a close look at your cashflow situation & we maintain our availability to discuss the matter with you should you desire.
Email & text scams?
October happens to be Cybersecurity Awareness month and we thought we would provide you with an update on this issue in this month’s newsletter. Talking to a few people over the last few months we have become aware of an increasing level of email & text-based scams. While we all seem to get spam emails and are now better equipped to identify & delete these emails, quite a few people have received text messages relating to packages or parcels asking for the receiver to click on a link in the text. The increase in these types of text messages is related to the increasing use of online shopping & home delivery and some of the text messages look quite genuine.
Clicking on these links can lead to all sorts of problems on your phone and we can’t stress enough how important it is to be careful. Any kind of text that seems suspicious should not only be deleted but the number blocked to avoid ongoing messages from the same sender. For those who have aging relatives or are close to people who are not overly technologically savvy, we recommend that you warn them about such scams.
Cybercrime & Security?
Cybercrime has become quite a serious issue to businesses large & small. During the 2020-21 financial year the Australian Cyber Security Centre (https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/small-and-medium-businesses) received 67,500 cybercrime reports that equates to one report every 8 minutes. A number of these reports were considered to be ‘substantial’ in impact & the Federal government is increasing the amount of resources dedicated to this area.
The report goes on to say:
1. A large number of the crimes were ransomware attacks costing businesses substantial amounts of money.
2. Ransomware has become a significant threat to Australian organisations with a 15% increase in these type of attacks during the financial year.
3. It seems that no sector in the economy was immune from such attacks including government agencies, infrastructure providers, SMEs & individuals.
4. It notes that cybercriminals are exploiting the pandemic environment by using for example COVID related topics and encouraging people to enter personal information (as mentioned above).
5. Business email compromise (BEC) continues to be a major threat to Australian businesses with the average loss per successful email compromise event costing in excess of $50,000.
Government Support
The Australian Government has set up a website dedicated to providing businesses with information & advice to protect your business online. We highly recommend you take some time to read the through the website. Cybercrime affects all businesses not simply those that involve online financial transactions. The resources can be found via the following link:
https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/small-and-medium-businesses/protecting-your-business-online
They also have a website dedicated to recommendations relating to managing your phones & computers. We also think you should take some time to read through it. The link follows:
https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/small-and-medium-businesses/securing-your-business-tools
Use the Recommendations
Once you have taken some time to read through the information, we recommend you implement changes to your personal & business processes to help minimise the risk of a cyberattack. Simple things such as changing passwords, avoiding using Public WiFi to send sensitive information, updating software on your devices when it becomes available & using quality anti-virus software are some examples of important changes to consider.
We are sincerely concerned about the risks in cybercrime and hope this information has been of value to you & your business.
Remember if you would like to tell us more about your business & what you have planned than give us a call today on (02) 6942 4932.